This is Day 2 of the 21-Day Journaling Challenge (21DJC) for Nov 2011. Read the announcement and details on the challenge here: 21-Day Journaling Challenge.

Hi everyone – Welcome to Day 2 of 21DJC!

Yesterday’s question was an age-old question – “What would you do if you have one million dollars?” Many of you had interesting responses. Some of you wanted to buy a nice, large house. Some of you wanted to use it to invest and grow more money. Some of you wanted to renovate your current home. Some of you wanted to start up a charity / NGO / organization that supports a humanitarian cause of your choice. Some of you wanted to travel around the world. Some of you wanted to give a portion to your family and friends, to enable them in their goals.

Whatever it is that you wrote, know that they represent inner wishes that you’ve been wanting to fulfill, but have yet to do so. Yesterday’s question was actually to draw out these innermost desires and bring them to your awareness.

And the interesting thing is, you don’t have to till you have $1 million before you can fulfill these desires.

What do I mean?

Goals represent your inner desires. One way to satisfy these desires is to achieve the actual goals themselves. However, you can only do that when you have $1 million in your arsenal (since it takes time to manifest). By having a goal that has to be deferred (i.e. you can’t work on your $1 million goals yet because you haven’t achieved $1 million), it’ll only disempower you and prevent you from living in the now.

The more empowering way is to (a) distill to those very desires and (b) find ways to realize them this very moment.

Look at what you wrote for yesterday’s $1 million question. Ask yourself – (a) What desires do these goals represent? (b) How can I realize these desires, right away today?

For example, say one of your $1 million goals is to travel around the world. In reality, you may not be able to travel to any country that you want now because of financial reasons.

However, remember that this isn’t the point. If you look at the desire this goal represents, it possibly reflects a desire to break free and take a breather, due to a prolonged period of not resting. The answer to realizing that then, would be to start taking breaks, even short vacations or just having the weekend off (see Habit #2 of 8 Habits of Highly Effective People). It may reflect a desire to be exposed to new cultures and grow from the multitude of experiences, of which you can already start doing now by getting out there to meet people of other backgrounds.

Another example – Say one of your goals is to allocate $X to your parents, as gratitude for bringing you up. You can already realize that now by sharing $Y every month, where $Y is a smaller amount than $X, adjusted to reflect how much you can spare for this purpose. You can be more generous toward them in your daily life. You can treat them to lunch/dinner/vacations, more so than you’re already doing now. Or if money isn’t a commodity at your disposal, you can do other things like prepare meals for them, write a card, spend more time to them, as acts of gratitude.

And so on and so forth the other $1 million goals.

There’s no need to put life on hold till [X event] happens. That’ll be to put off living. Think about how you can make your desires happen now. This is what it means to live in the now.

3 Important Things To Note Before Continuing

#1. Sign Up First Before You Proceed

Here’s a quick shout out – We now have over 570 official participants!! *whistles and claps* :clap: That’s over 140 new participants registered in the past 24 hours!! To all new participants – Welcome on board!!

For those who have not signed up yet, it’s not too late – you *can* still sign up now. Simply hop over to the announcement post, complete the 3 steps to sign-up, and you’ll be added to the list in 24 hours:

Please make sure you’re signed up before you proceed. The comments area for each day’s post is designated only for those who have signed up for the challenge.

#2. Post Your Entries in the Right Thread

Some of you have been erroneously posting your journal entries in the wrong thread. For example, posting your replies to the questions for Day 1 and Day 2 in the announcement post, and so on.

Note that the announcement post is only for sign up registration, while Day 1′s post is for posting your Day 1′s journal entries; Day 2′s post is for Day 2′s journal entries, and so on. I’ll be deleting the entries that are posted in the wrong thread from now on, as it makes it confusing for other readers. Please kindly cooperate and follow the instructions for the benefit of the community – thank you!

#3. Get Your Gravatar

You may have noticed some participants have a nice profile picture displayed with their comments. For example, my comment here. Most of you have the default PE logo (maroon red with white text), because you have not created your gravatar account.

To set your custom profile picture, visit Gravatar, register your account (Important: Make sure it’s the same email as the one you use in your blog comments) and upload your profile picture. Your picture will automatically be reflected in all your blog comments where you had filled out the same email address as the one in your Gravatar account. This is a great way to spruce up the comments section and individualize yourself!

Let’s now move on to the question for Day 2 of 21DJC!

21DJC Day 2

Day’s 2 question is one of my personal favorites:

If You Are To Do Something For Free For the Rest of Your Life, What Would It Be?

Would you sleep and do nothing? Would you pursue a certain passion? What would that passion be? Would you be pursuing a particular craft? What would that be? Would you be traveling around the world? Would you be blogging? What about? Would you want to pursue a humanitarian cause? What would it be? Would you be writing? What about?

Update: Some readers seem to have some confusion over how to interpret the question. Is the question supposed to mean what you would willingly do without receiving money for? Or is it suppose to mean what you would want to do because it does not cost anything?

My answer? The former. If I were to rephrase the question: “What would you want to do for the rest of your life if you are never paid for this work?” In other words, your life passion. Your life purpose. Hope that helps!

Put on your reflection cap and let your thoughts flow. Below is an empty form which you can use to write your answers to the question. Treat it as your private 21DJC journaling “room”, if you will. You will be seeing this form every day, for the 21 days of the challenge. There’s a button for you to keep track of your word count too, if you’re interested.

(Note you will not see the form below if you’re viewing this in your email client. Visit the actual post online to see the form.)

If You Are To Do Something For Free For the Rest of Your Life, What Would It Be?

Your Task Today:

Reflect and answer today’s question. There’s no word limit – whether minimum or maximum. Write as few or as many words as you want. It’s all up to what you want to express!

Share your answer. After you are done writing, copy and paste your answer in the comments area and post it there.

Check out other participants’ answers. Other participants will be sharing their answers too, so feel free to read and reply to their answers. This is a group course, so let’s support each other in these 21 days.

If that ‘something free’ was unlimited travel allowance, I’d be in a different country every week for the rest of my life. I love discovering new places, meet people from different cultures, tasting different food & love how history has been written in each place. That’s what I’d do for free for the rest of my life.

Learning. Is ‘learning’ too vague to be something? As a typical Gemini, I have so many things that i want to learn, so many passion, so many dreams that i want to chase after. But i can’t do all that… I’d thought of studying even when i’m out there working, but it just seem like an unworkable plan…

I think that this is an absolutely wonderful thing to aspire to. I love being able to seek more knowledge and being able to pick up new skills. The best thing about this idea is that I find there is many sources to learn from in my life, whether it be my family, friends, work mates or my boss, or even customers, I find it amazing just how much people will share with you if you can ask them the right questions.

I can relate to that. I love studying and learning new things. I love knowing about every topic on earth, engineering, literature, psichology, sociology, mathematics, biology, environmental sciences… It is so hard to stick just to one. I wish I had a million years to live so that I could study and know about every topic, but as I can´t do that, I decided to chose the one thing that I like the most and dedicate my live to that. After thinking for a while I realized that there´s one thing that scored higher than the rest on my list, on which I would love to spend my entire live with. Trying to cover every topic/every dream is sometimes frustrating because there´s just not enough time to do it, but it takes some time to think about what you really want to realize that there is always something that you want more than some other thing, and once you´ve acomplish that, you can move to the next on your list and so on. Good Luck!!

Thanks, i get what you mean. Nanotechnology, Biomedical, Psychology, forensic science… Its hard to choose. Beside, i have interest in the arts, but haven’t really got the chance to try them yet.
and
1 year from now, i would be choosing my tertiary education, two-way route.
Would you advise a 16 year-old to choose an area of studies to embark in?or wait a few years more?

I would suggest trying to chose first between science and arts/literature, etc. That´s the first step. And it´s important that you take it now.
I can´t really give you much advice as I don´t know where you´re from and how the academic system works in your country.

With time you´ll see that there is always something that you like more, something you wouldn´t mind spending your whole live doing. Also keep in mind that you can always change, you can study a career and do a Master´s degree on something different or even study a new career. It is never too late to study something different, and you can also study on your own, buying books, etc.

I prefer focusing on something specific even though there are many many things I like. I´m studying criminology and psychology. Those two careers take many things from others, quemistry, biology, even arts! Psychology is the study of human beings, and it covers so many different things, society, art, behavior, etc. It´s a career that opens you up to many posibilities. I will specialize in forensics/criminal behavior because that´s what I like the most, even though I also like clinical psychology just to give you an example. But that´s just my personal opinion.and my personal experience, and I´m really happy with my choice.

Hope that helps you! Good luck with your studies and hope you choose the field that makes you happy and again, you can always change if on the way you find something that you love even more.

I’m a Gemini as well as a number 7 in numerology (seeker of knowledge) and I definitely relate to that! In fact that was also my answer ^.^

My problem is precisely the money and time I would need to spend in order to do everything I wanted (and there are a lot of things that I wanted to do…)
If the “money factor” was out of the way then I wouldn’t waste anymore time and would get myself busy learning something new right now! =D

Sometimes I want to read and learn so much that it’s like a physical hunger. Learning is a need as valid as food or water. And actually, studies indicate that lifelong readers are much less prone to suffer from neurological defects and diseases, such as Alzheimer’s. So learning and the hunger for understanding is the reason I want to be a scientist.

Curiosity
For the gifted child
Is a hunger,
A mental fire
Burning in
The prefrontal cortex…

My neighbor, Mrs. Amber Angel loves to study all the time, too. She told me that if she could, she’d live in a library. I almost wish I owned all the books in the Library of Congress!

If I am to do something for free for the rest of my life, I would probably be pursuing my passions which are baking, travelling and blogging.

1. I’d be baking and testing recipes every day without the need to think so much on the money spent for the baking ingredients, various utensils/equipment, books, gas and probably courses too.

2. I’d be exploring new places every other month (or weeks perhaps) with my loved ones – seeing the world together. Sightseeing, enjoying different cultures, meeting new people and tasting local food.

3. If I don’t have to worry so much about the so-called ‘office’ working hours to earn my living – I’d spend more time updating my blog too. There would be no more ‘spare time’ for blogging. There’d always be blogging time for me, anytime and anywhere. For as long as I want to.

I would travel around Australia, giving myself time to really see all the different towns and cities have to offer. I would love the opportunity to learn about each place’s cultural heritage and history and I would really LOVE the opportunity to hone my photography skills by capturing landcapes, landmarks, and wildlife as I travel.

Write books and articles to express myself in every way possible. Writing beautiful heart warming books with a theme that guides readers through a series of steps and helps them manifest whatever they want. These would be there like a good friend always full of good advice. They are a starting point for some, a guide to help, a reference point for another. They have depth clarity and weight and perform a function of not only being instructive but entertaining and innovative crammed full of ideas and inspiration. They would contribute to helping people feel better and being able to cope with more skill as they face life.

21DJC Day 2 – If You Are To Do Something For Free For the Rest of Your Life, What Would It Be?

If I am free
I won’t take college where I was now
I’ll pursue my passion to become an artist, designer, and illustrator
especially artist in game developing
(however far before this challenge I’ve read some of your articles. and I’ve decided to take architectural college next term!)
I wanna be a professional artist

I want to work in my house in front of my computer, working by drawing as an artist (I am a digital artist amateur)
seeing my family everyday, eating my mom’s cook, seeing my lil bo become a fine grown up gentleman, what a happy life!!

Help a friend during trying times. There’s nothing more rewarding in life but being able to impart the goodness you have in you to uplift others. Even if it is only by my own simple ways, I shall be willingly giving help to my friends and loved ones. The simplest thing to do is smile whenever you see them. By doing so, they won’t feel alone.

1. Learning
Except violence, there might not be anything that I am not interested in. I love learning new things. But these days all type of knowledge is not free, so if it were free, then I would like to learn everything.

2. Travelling
I love visiting new places, trying adventurous sports, tasting different cuisine, learning about different cultures, taking pictures and having fun. So, if it were free, I would like to travel and visit every part of the world.

Right now also I learn new things daily and travel a lot, but if it were free, I would be doing it in abundance without limiting myself due to expenses

Hey! Looks like a few of us would do the learning/travel thing. Like you, I’m interested in so many different topics that the biggest obstacle would probably be trying to figure out which ones I wanted to learn first!

@ Iva – your welcome. Thank you for your lovely support too, I am grateful and appreciative!!!
Your comment resonated with me ALOT and I thought it was pretty smart. I thought “Clever girl” lol I cannot think of anything else better than traveling, helping others Iva but there is alot of creative people out there and its amazing at the number of responses about doing something for free…
xx

There are two things I would do with the unlimited resources to do them: study and travel. University has always been my “happy place.” It almost doesn’t matter what I’m learning- I just love to learn. I would accumulate college degrees in every subject that took my fancy and a few advanced degrees in the ones I really love. I’ve often said that I wish going to school could be my job. I’m probably a little weird, in that I think that writing papers and doing problems is fun, not work. I even enjoy tests!

During school holidays, I would travel. I’ve covered most of Europe multiple times, although there are plenty of places I’d love to return to, and have spent time in Japan, but I’m anxious to see Asia, Africa and South America. If I had the time, I’d gladly travel to at least two different countries a year.

That would be the ideal life for me!

Word Count: 157

Note: this is my second journal entry today. I have a rather neglected private journal that is calling to me now that I’ve started this challenge.

I would travel around the world, I think. Learn new languages, discover new cultures, meet new people. During my travels, I would go to university lectures everywhere because I’m extremely curious and love learning new things – never the same subject though. This is a really hard question, because I don’t have a specific passion (I used to have one, of course, but hurt myself and can’t anymore – I need to find something new !) right now, don’t know what job I want to do… But what I do know is that I love reading (so if I could read new books for free for the rest of my life, I’d immediately seize the opportunity !) and traveling (as I said). So probably these two points, yes – and probably the second one, because reading can get boring at times, but traveling never does !

There is a certain feeling i get whenever i am talking to someone about issues that do bring out the very best out of themselves. It humbles my heart with gratitude when i look into their eyes and see that spark of self belief starting to lighten up, that ‘i can do it’ feeling. I again go on to get the same feeling or even massively more when i get buried into reading a self help book or whatever i am reading that is positive. To describe this feeling a little more,it feels like someone with very soft hands and a very sweet scent coming out of them,tenderly holding and massaging my heart or soul. This kind of feeling i get when i do something for someone out of good heart, not expecting anything in return. And out of the blue, they surprise me with a thank you accompanied by a very big smile. I think this is one of the few times i get a chance to excercise my heart and i just could not put a price on it. So if i had to do something for free for the rest of my life, without a shadow of a doubt i will teach,share,inspire,encourage others to achieve towards their highest potential. And simply put, i will learn to win and spend the rest of my life teaching others free of charge, to do so. I just love personal development.

Very touching! I share your thoughts and values – “i will teach,share,inspire,encourage others to achieve towards their highest potential.” and would helping them to fulfil themselves and other people.

There is something I would do for free… Being compassionate to help others, write and blog about my journey, inspire others and give where I can daily. Honestly, I believe I am already doing this but not enough of it. My biggest “What would you give for free, the rest of my life?” is: HELP OTHERS. I want to travel the world and help where-ever I can.

I believe this makes me who I am and I am not ashamed of wanting to help people and see people smile. I hate seeing sad faces and watching the news knowing that I could be doing something to help others that are facing adversity, while I live in a self-proficient country. Just my few bobs of thought! Ezzy